a) Searching the Archives & b) Uninstalling

[Brandon Allbery]

On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 8:46 PM, David Winsemius <dwinsemius at comcast.net>
wrote:

> david-winsemiuss-mac-pro:~ davidwinsemius$ sudo port selfupdate
> --->  Updating MacPorts base sources using rsync
> MacPorts base version 2.1.3 installed,
> MacPorts base version 2.3.1 downloaded.
> --->  Updating the ports tree
> --->  MacPorts base is outdated, installing new version 2.3.1
> Warning: Disabling readline support due to readline in /usr/local
> Installing new MacPorts release in /opt/local as root:admin; permissions
> 0755; Tcl-Package in /Library/Tcl
>
> Error: /opt/local/bin/port: port selfupdate failed: Error installing new
> MacPorts base: command execution failed
> -----------------
>
> I've read that trying to uninstall macPorts can be dangerous and advised
> to pose my question here. What advice can anyone offer.
>

Normally it's not dangerous at all, and the instructions are in the
MacPorts FAQ.

In your case, it *might* be: because of the warning quoted above. You
haven't been practicing proper package hygiene; it is nearly impossible to
prevent random things from picking up stuff in /usr/local, and can be
difficult to prevent some things from looking in /sw and /opt/local on
Macs. (configure scripts and cmake rules are often too smart for their own
good.) If you've been installing non-MacPorts stuff, in other words, it may
have quietly made itself dependent on MacPorts and could break without
warning if you remove MacPorts; conversely, removing whatever you have in
/usr/local might break stuff installed by MacPorts, despite our best
efforts to avoid stuff in /usr/local finding its way into MacPorts.

MacPorts and Homebrew both warn not to have the other installed, for this
reason. Fink is also potentially problematic to both, and potentially could
in turn be broken by either/both although this is less likely because it's
binary-only.

-- 
brandon s allbery kf8nh                               sine nomine associates
allbery.b at gmail.com                                  ballbery at sinenomine.net
unix, openafs, kerberos, infrastructure, xmonad        http://sinenomine.net
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